Let me start by saying I had high hopes for Sage 50 Pro Accounting 2023. The promise of 'trusted accounting for 41 years' sounded reassuring, but my actual experience was anything but smooth sailing.

The payroll feature is practically a bait-and-switch. Despite prominently advertising payroll capabilities, you'll spend hours on hold just to discover it requires an additional (and undisclosed) subscription. Not exactly the 'simple to start' experience they advertise.

Data migration from QuickBooks? Absolute disaster. My accounts became financial Frankenstein monsters - closed accounts resurrected with absurd balances, current accounts off by millions. The beginning balance import is uneditable, forcing manual corrections that negate any time-saving benefits.

The customer service experience deserves its own horror story chapter. When issues arose (and they will), support couldn't even locate my account. The kicker? They locked me out of my own data until I paid for additional services - digital ransom at its finest.

While the inventory tracking and job costing features work as advertised when they work, the fundamental flaws in data integrity and customer support make this software more trouble than it's worth. At $240 for what turned out to be just 8 months of usable service (not the promised year), I can't recommend this to any small business owner who values their sanity.